Return of the Great Pumpkin

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2023 issue of Zymurgy Magazine

By Mark Pasquinelli

Linus never got to see the Great Pumpkin, but the craft beer community is a more fortunate lot. We’ve already witnessed his arrival and bided our time while he took a breather, and now we’re about to experience pumpkin beer’s triumphant return, rising once again from the most sincere breweries and resuming its rightful place as America’s favorite seasonal brew.

It feels like many lifetimes ago since I last wrote about pumpkin beer (See “Pumpkin Beer: The Holiday Crowd Pleaser,” Zymurgy, Nov/Dec 2008). This style was becoming “a thing,” about to explode onto the craft and homebrew beer scenes. In those halcyon days, it was easy to pluck a few dozen outstanding examples from bottle shop shelves for a tasting party.

Then, just as suddenly, the boom went bust. Pumpkin beer haters, like Linus’s sister Lucy, rejoiced, saying, “I told you blockheads so.”

What happened? Too much of a good thing, perhaps—the style a victim of its own success? My believe is that many of the breweries weren’t sincere and brewed pumpkin ale out of a sense of obligation rather than love, as some brewers now do with IPA. The commensurate drop in the style’s quality showed in the marketplace.

Yet I saw this correction as the best possible scenario. The herd needed thinning, and now pumpkin beer—a wonderful but strangely polarizing style—is poised for a comeback, reborn with renewed vigor, with a chance to bounce back even stronger.

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